IT WORKS; HOW AND WHY THE TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS OF NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS

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IT WORKS; HOW AND WHY

THE TWELVE STEPS

AND TWELVE TRADITIONS

OF NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS

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Contents INTRODUCTION ... 1 BOOK ONE ... 2 STEP ONE ... 3 STEP TWO ... 8 STEP THREE ... 12 STEP FOUR ... 16 STEP FIVE ... 21 STEP SIX ... 25 STEP SEVEN ... 29 STEP EIGHT ... 32 STEP NINE ... 35 STEP TEN ... 40 STEP ELEVEN ... 44 STEP TWELVE ... 48

BOOK TWO The Twelve Traditions ... 52

TRADITION ONE ... 53

Applying spiritual principles ... 54

TRADITION TWO ... 57

TRADITION THREE ... 61

TRADITION FOUR ... 64

TRADITION FIVE ... 67

TRADITION SIX ... 70

TRADITION SEVEN ... 73

TRADITION EIGHT ... 78

TRADITION NINE ... 80

TRADITION TEN ... 83

TRADITION ELEVEN ... 86

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome! The book you have in your hands is a discussion of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Narcotics Anonymous. We realize that, whether written or verbal, no discussion of something as personal and individual as recovery can be all things to all people. This book is not meant to be an exhaustive study of NA’s steps and traditions, nor is it meant to be the final word on any aspect of recovery or NA unity. Rather, it is meant to help you determine your own interpretation of the principles contained in our steps and traditions. We hope you will find personal growth, understanding, and empathy in the following pages. We pray you will be moved to a new level of insight into your recovery and the valuable place you occupy as a member of Narcotics Anonymous.

Each member of NA has contributed to this book in some way. Whether you are new to recovery or one of our longtime members, your experience, your support, and, above all, your presence in the rooms where addicts meet to share recovery have been the motivating forces behind the production of this book. Though the process of writing a book about the experience of a

fellowship as diverse as ours has been lengthy, we saw all the barriers and stumbling blocks fade away in the light of our primary purpose: to carry the message to the still-suffering addict. That one purpose, clear and powerful, stands alone in our collective consciousness as the only thing that really matters. With that, all is possible and miracles happen.

The nature of the recovery process gave us the title for this book. After all was said and done, one fundamental truth emerged as the crux of our program: IT WORKS. The reasons our program works, the how and why of recovery, are found in many places: in each other, in our relationship with a Higher Power, in our hearts and minds, and finally, in the collective wisdom of our members.

Because our principal endeavor in the development of this book has been to capture that

collective wisdom in written form, we believe the title of this book is most appropriate: It Works: How & Why.

We pray that this book truly represents the therapeutic value of one addict helping another. We offer this book as a gift, addict to addict, and hope our love and concern for every addict who is trying our way of life comes across as strongly as we feel it. Please use and enjoy this book. Share it with your friends, your sponsor, and the people you sponsor. After all, it is through sharing with each other that we find our own answers, our own Higher Power, and our own path of recovery.

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BOOK ONE

The Twelve Steps

The purpose of this portion of the book is to invite members to engage in a journey of recovery and to serve as a resource in gaining a personal understanding of the spiritual principles in the Twelve Steps of Narcotics Anonymous. This portion of the book explores the spiritual principles in each step and how we experience them in our lives. We believe that the steps are presented in a manner that encompasses the diversity of our fellowship and is reflective of the spiritual awakening described in our Twelfth Step.

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STEP ONE

“We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.”

As addicts, we have each experienced the pain, loneliness, and despair of addiction. Before coming to NA, most of us tried everything we could think of to control our use of drugs. We tried switching drugs, thinking that we only had a problem with one particular drug. We tried limiting our drug use to certain times or places. We may even have vowed to stop using altogether at a certain point. We may have told ourselves we would never do the things we watched other addicts do, then found ourselves doing those very things. Nothing we tried had any lasting effective.

Our active addiction continued to progress, overpowering even our best intentions. Alone, terrified of what the future held for us, we found the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous. As members of Narcotics Anonymous, our experience is that addiction is a progressive disease. The progression may be rapid or slow, but it is always downhill. As long as we are using drugs, our lives will steadily get worse. It would be impossible to precisely describe addiction in a way that is agreeable to everyone. However, the disease seems to affect us in the following general ways. Mentally, we become obsessed with thoughts of using. Physically, we develop a

compulsion to continue using, regardless of the consequences. Spiritually, we become totally self-centered in the course of our addiction. Looking at addiction as a disease makes sense to a lot of addicts because, in our experience, addiction is progressive, incurable, and can be fatal unless arrested.

In Narcotics Anonymous, we deal with every aspect of our addiction, not just its most obvious symptom: our uncontrollable drug use. The aspects of our disease are numerous. By practicing this program, we each discover the ways in which our addiction affects us personally. Regardless of the individual effects of addiction on our lives, all of us share some common characteristics. Through working the First Step we will address the obsession, the compulsion, the denial, and what many have termed a “spiritual void.”

As we examine and acknowledge all these aspects of our disease, we start to understand our powerlessness. Many of us have had problems with the idea that, as addicts, we are obsessive and compulsive. The idea that these words applied to us may have made us cringe. However, obsession and compulsion are aspects of our powerlessness. We need to understand and acknowledge their presence in our lives if our admission of powerlessness is to be complete. Obsession, for us, is the never-ending stream of thoughts relating to using drugs, running out of drugs, getting more drugs, and so on. We simply can’t get these thoughts out of our minds. In our experience, compulsion is the irrational impulse to continue using drugs, no matter what happens as a result. We just can’t stop. We address obsession and compulsion here as they relate to our drug use because, when we first come into the program, our drug addiction is how we identify with each other and the program. As we continue in our recovery, we will see how these aspects of our addiction can manifest themselves in many areas of our lives.

Denial is the part of our disease that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for us to acknowledge reality. In our addiction, denial protected us from seeing the reality of what our lives had

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become. We often told ourselves that, given the right set of circumstances, we might still be able to bring our lives under control. Always skillful at defending our actions, we refused to accept responsibility for the damage done by our addiction. We believed that if we tried long and hard enough, substituted one drug for another, switched friends, or changed our living arrangements or occupations, our lives would improve. These rationalizations repeatedly failed us, yet we continued to cling to them. We denied that we had a problem with drugs, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. We lied to ourselves, believing that we could use again successfully. We justified our actions, despite the wreckage around us resulting from our addiction.

The spiritual part of our disease, the part we may recognize only by a feeling of emptiness or loneliness when we first get clean, is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of addiction for us. Because this part of our disease affects us so profoundly and so personally, we may be

overwhelmed when we think about applying a program of recovery to it. However, we need to keep in mind that recovery doesn’t happen overnight for anyone.

As we start to look at the effects of our disease, we are sure to see that our lives have become unmanageable. We see it in all the things that are wrong with our lives. Again, our experiences are individual and vary widely from addict to addict. Some of us realized our lives had become unmanageable because we felt out of control emotionally or began to feel guilty about our drug use. Some of us have lost everything our homes, our families, our jobs, and our self- respect. Some of us never learned how to function as human beings at all. Some of us have spent time in jails and institutions. And some of us have come very close to death. Whatever our individual circumstances, our lives have been governed by obsessive, compulsive, self-seeking behavior, and the end result has been unmanageability.

Perhaps we arrived in NA without recognizing the problems we had for what they were. Because of our self-centeredness, we were often the last ones to realize that we were addicts. Many of us were persuaded by friends or family to begin attending NA meetings. Other members received even stronger encouragement from the courts. No matter how it occurred, our long-standing illusions had to be shattered. Honesty had to replace denial before we could face the truth of our addiction.

Many of us recall the moment of clarity when we came face to face with our disease. All the lies, all the pretenses, all the rationalizations we had used to justify where we stood as a result of our drug use stopped working. Who and what we were becomes more clear. We could no longer avoid the truth.

We have found that we cannot recover without the ability to be honest. Many of us came to NA after spending years practicing dishonesty. However, we can learn to be honest, and we must begin to try. Learning to be honest is an ongoing process; we are able to become progressively more honest as we work the steps and continue to stay clean. In the First Step, we begin to practice the spiritual principle of honesty by admitting the truth about our drug use. Then we go on to admit the truth about our lives. We face what is, not the way things could be or should be. It doesn’t matter where we come from or how good or bad we think we’ve had it; when we finally turn to Narcotics Anonymous and the Twelve Steps, we begin to find relief.

As we begin working the First Step, it is important to ask ourselves some basic personal questions: Can I control my use of drugs? Am I willing to stop using? Am I willing to do whatever it takes to recover? Given a choice between finding a new way of life in NA and continuing in our addiction, recovery begins to appeal to us.

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We begin to let go of our reservations, those parts of ourselves we won’t surrender to the

program. Most of us do have some reservations when we first get clean. Even so, we need to find ways of addressing them. Reservations can be anything: a belief that, because we never had a problem with one particular drug, we can still use it; placing a condition on our recovery, such as only staying clean as long as our expectations are met; a belief that we can still be involved with the people associated with our addiction; a belief that we can use again after a certain amount of time clean; a conscious or unconscious decision to work only certain steps. With the help of other recovering addicts, we can find ways to put our reservations behind us. The most important thing for us to know about reservations is that, by keeping them, we are reserving a place in our program for relapse.

Recovery begins when we start to apply the spiritual principles contained in the Twelve Steps of NA to all areas of our lives. We realize, however, that we cannot begin this process unless we stop using drugs. Total abstinence from all drugs is the only way we can begin to overcome our addiction. While abstinence is the beginning, our only hope for recovery is a profound emotional and spiritual change.

Our experience shows that it is necessary for us to be willing to do anything it takes to obtain this precious gift of recovery. In recovery, we will be introduced to spiritual principles such as the surrender, honesty, and acceptance required for the First Step. If we faithfully practice these principles, they will transform our perceptions and the way we live our lives.

When we first begin to practice these principles, they may seem very unnatural to us. It may take a deliberate effort on our part to make the honest admission called for in Step One. Even though we are admitting our addiction, we may still wonder if this program will really work. Acceptance of our addiction is something that goes beyond our conscious admission. When we accept our addiction, we gain the hope of recovery. We begin to believe on a deep level that we, too, can recover. We begin to let go of our doubts and truly come to terms with our disease. We become open to change. We surrender.

As we work the First Step, we find that surrender is not what we thought it was. In the past, we probably thought of surrender as something that only weak and cowardly people did. We saw only two choices: either keep fighting to control our using or just cave in completely and let our lives fall to pieces. We felt we were in a battle to control our using and that, if we surrendered, the drugs would win. In recovery, we find that surrender involves letting go of our reservations about recovery and being willing to try a different approach to living life. The process of surrender is extremely personal for each one of us. Only we, as individuals, know when we’ve done it. We stress the importance of surrender, for it is the very process that enables us to recover. When we surrender, we know in our hearts that we’ve had enough. We’re tired of fighting. A relief comes over us as we finally realize that the struggle is over.

No matter how hard we fought, we finally reached the point of surrender where we realized that we couldn’t stop using drugs on our own. We were able to admit our powerlessness over our addiction. We gave up completely. Even though we didn’t know exactly what would happen, we gathered up our courage and admitted our powerlessness. We gave up the illusion that we could control our using, thereby opening the door to recovery

Many of us begin the process of surrender when we identify ours elves at an NA meeting with our name and the words, “I am an addict.” Once we admit that we are addicts and that we cannot stop using on our own, we are able to stay clean on a daily basis with the help of other

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work the First Step. As long as we think we can control our drug use, we are almost forced to continue. The minute we admit we’re powerless, we never have to use again. This reprieve from having to use is the most profound gift we can receive, for it saves our lives.

Through our collective experience, we have found that we can accomplish together what we cannot do alone. It is necessary for us to seek help from other recovering addicts. As we attend meetings regularly, we can find great comfort in the experiences of those traveling this path with us. Coming to NA has been described by many members as “coming home.” We find ourselves welcomed and accepted by other recovering addicts. We finally find a place where we belong. Though we are sure to be helped by the sharing we hear at meetings, we need to find a sponsor to help us in our recovery. Beginning with the First Step, a sponsor can share with us his or her own experience with the steps. Listening to our sponsor’s experience and applying it to our own lives is how we take advantage of one of the most beautiful and practical aspects of recovery: the therapeutic value of one addict helping another. We hear in our meetings that “I can’t, but we can.” Actively working with a sponsor will give us some first hand experience with this. Through our developing relationship with our sponsor, we learn about the principle of trust. By following the suggestions of our sponsor instead of only our own ideas, we learn the principles of open-mindedness and willingness. Our sponsor will help us work the steps of recovery. Talking honestly with our sponsor about our drug use and how it affected our lives will help us work the First Step thoroughly. We need always remember where we came from and where our addiction took us. We have only a daily reprieve from our active addiction. Each day, we accept the fact that we cannot use drugs successfully.

The process of recovery isn’t easy. It takes great courage and perseverance to continue in

recovery day after day. Part of the recovery process is to move forward in spite of whatever may stand in our way. Because long-lasting change in recovery happens slowly, we will turn to the First Step again and again.

Even long periods of abstinence do not guarantee us continued freedom from the pain and trouble that addiction can bring. The symptoms of our disease can always return. We may find that we are powerless in ways we never imagined. This is where we begin to understand how the things we tried so hard to control are, in reality, completely beyond our control. No matter how our disease displays itself, we must take its deadly nature into account. As we do, we develop a fuller awareness of the nature of our disease.

The disease of addiction can manifest itself in a variety of mental obsessions and compulsive actions that have nothing to do with drugs. We sometimes find ourselves obsessed and behaving compulsively over things we may never have had problems with until we stopped using drugs. We may once again try to fill the awful emptiness we sometimes feel with something outside ourselves. Any time we find ourselves using something to change the way we feel, we need to apply the principles of the First Step.

We are never immune from having our lives become unmanageable, even after years of

recovery. If problems pile up and our resources for coping with them dwindle, we may feel out of control and in too much pain to do anything constructive for ourselves. We feel overwhelmed by life, and that feeling seems to make everything worse. When our lives seem to be falling apart, we reapply ourselves to the basics of the NA program. We stay in close contact with our sponsor, work the steps, and go to meetings. We surrender again, knowing that victory lies in the admission of defeat.

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The feeling of love and acceptance we find in the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous allows us to begin recovering from our addiction. We learn a new way to live. The emptiness from which we suffered is filled through working and living the Twelve Steps. We learn that our addiction is being addressed in all its complexity by this simple program. We have found a solution to our hopelessness.

There is a deeply spiritual nature to our program of recovery. The Twelve Steps of Narcotics Anonymous will take us on a journey that will far exceed our expectations. Working and living the steps will lead us to a spiritual awakening. Step One is the beginning of this spiritual journey. To get started on this journey, we must become willing to surrender to this program and its principles, for our future hinges on our willingness to grow spiritually.

We are starting a new way of life, one that offers great joy and happiness. However, recovery doesn’t exempt us from pain. Living life on life’s terms combines moments of happiness with moments of sadness. Wonderful events are mixed with painful ones. We will experience a full range of feelings about the events in our lives.

By honestly looking at what we have become in our addiction, we recognize the powerlessness and unmanageability of our lives. Moving beyond our reservations, we accept our addiction, surrender, and experience the hope that recovery offers. We realize that we can no longer go on as we have been. We are ready for a change. We are willing to try another way. With our willingness, we move on to Step Two.

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STEP TWO

“We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

Our surrender in the First Step leaves us with a deep need to believe that we can recover. This surrender makes it possible for us to feel hope. By admitting our own powerlessness, we open our minds to an entirely new idea: the possibility that something greater than ourselves might be powerful enough to relieve our obsession to use drugs. It is quite likely that, before coming to NA, we never believed in any power but our own willpower, and that had failed us. NA introduces us to a new understanding. We draw hope from this understanding and begin to comprehend what it means to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. We find additional hope by listening to other recovering addicts. We can relate to where they’ve been and draw hope from who they’ve become. We listen closely at meetings and become willing to apply what we hear to our own lives. As we begin to believe that there is hope for us, we also begin to trust the process of recovery.

Our White Booklet states, “There is one thing more than anything else that will defeat us in our recovery; this is an attitude of indifference or intolerance toward spiritual principles. Three of these that are indispensable are honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness.” This doesn’t mean we must be unfailingly honest, open-minded, and willing. We just have to try as best we can to practice these principles. As we first approach Step Two, we can practice the principle of honesty by acknowledging and sharing what we do or don’t believe about a Power greater than ourselves. Developing our open-mindedness requires some effort, but we can practice this principle by listening to other recovering addicts share how they came to believe. For many of us, the willingness to try something new came about simply because we were so tired of our old ways. It seemed to us that, because our own power wasn’t sufficient to restore our sanity, perhaps something else could, if we let it.

Many of us felt that insanity was too harsh a word to describe our condition. However, if we take a realistic look at our active addiction, we’ll see that we have been anything but sane. For the most part, our perceptions were not based in reality. We viewed the world around us as a hostile environment. Some of us withdrew physically and had little, if any, contact with anyone. Some of us went through the motions of life but allowed nothing to touch us emotionally. Either way, we ended up feeling isolated. Despite evidence to the contrary we felt that we were in control. We ignored or didn’t believe the truths that were staring us in the face. We continued to do the same things and expected the results to be different. Worst of all was the fact that we continued to use drugs, regardless of the negative consequences we experienced. Despite the warning signs that our drug use was out of control, we continued trying to justify it. All too often, the result was that we could no longer face ourselves. When we take a realistic look at our lives, there can be no doubt that we desperately need a restoration to sanity.

Regardless of our individual interpretation of the term “restoration,” most of us agree that, for us, it means changing to a point where addiction and its accompanying insanity are not controlling our lives. Being restored to sanity is a life-long process. Individually, we experience it differently at varying stages of our recovery but we all can see some results of this process right from the beginning of our recovery. Initially, being restored to sanity means that we no longer have to use drugs. We go to meetings rather than isolating. We call our sponsor rather than sitting alone with

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painful feelings. We ask for our sponsor’s guidance in working the steps, a real demonstration of sanity. We begin to believe that a powerful force can restore us to sanity. At long last, we feel hope for ourselves.

“We came to believe” implies a process. For some, this process is simple, and it may bring immediate results. Many of us arrived in NA so completely defeated that we were willing to try anything. Seeking help from a Power greater than ourselves may have been the best idea we had ever heard. However, the process of coming to believe can be difficult, even painful. Many of us have found that acting as if we believe is helpful. This does not mean we should be dishonest. Rather, it means that if we have doubts, we practice the program as if we believe we can be restored to sanity.

Belief in a Power greater than ourselves does not come easily to all of us. However, we have found an open mind indispensable when we approach this step. If we look around us, we find many reasons to believe. Our belief may simply be that we can recover from a life of active addiction. The freedom from the obsession to use may be our first experience of a Power greater than ourselves at work in our lives. Perhaps for the first time in many years, our obsession with drugs no longer controls our every waking moment. Knowing that we don’t have to use today is a powerful belief in and of itself.

We start to develop faith through the process of coming to believe. It starts with hope. For some of us, this may be only a faint spark at first, perhaps just the thought that maybe, if we work this program, our lives will get better. Our hope turns to faith as our lives begin to improve. For many of us, faith can be described as a belief in something intangible. After all, who can

logically explain the sudden lifting of an obsession to use drugs, yet this has happened for many of us. With our hope for a different life and the beginnings of our faith that recovery is possible, we start the process of coming to believe in a Power greater than ourselves.

We come from various walks of life and experience, so it is natural that we bring with us

differing concepts of spirituality. In NA, no one is forced to believe any set ideas. Each one of us can believe in anything in which we want to believe. This is a spiritual program, not a religion. Individually, we cultivate our own beliefs about a Power greater than we are. No matter what we understand this Power to be, help is available to us all.

In the beginning, many of us turn to the group or the love we encounter in Narcotics Anonymous as our Higher Power. An NA group is a powerful example of a Power greater than ourselves at work. Often in desperation, we enter a room full of addicts who share their experience, strength, and hope with us. As we listen, we know with certainty that they have felt the hopelessness and remorse from which we, too, have suffered. As we observe other addicts practicing a new way of life without the use of drugs, we may come to believe that we, too, can recover. Watching other addicts stay clean is compelling proof of the existence of a Power greater than ourselves. We not ice the acceptance that recovering addicts show each other. We watch as addicts celebrate lengths of clean time that we think will be impossible for us to attain. Perhaps someone hugs us and tells us to “keep coming back.” Members give us their phone numbers. We feel the power of the group, and this helps us start to heal.

Many of us use spiritual principles as a power greater than ourselves. We come to believe that, by practicing these principles in our lives, we can be restored to sanity. This makes sense to us because we have tried many times to think ourselves into a better way of life. We usually had good intentions, but our day-to-day existence rarely measured up to those intentions. Trying it

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the other way, practicing a better way of life by living according to spiritual principles, will eventually have an effect on our thinking.

It is not necessary that we define for ourselves the entire concept of a Power greater than ourselves. Those of us with many years of recovery find that our understanding of a Higher Power changes over time. Our belief grows, as does our faith. We come to believe in a Power which can help us far more than we originally thought.

As we search for understanding of a Higher Power, we can talk with our sponsor and other recovering addicts. We may ask them what their idea of a Higher Power is and how they have arrived at it. This may open our minds to possibilities we hadn’t considered before.

While it is useful to question others about their spiritual beliefs, we must remember that our understanding of a Power greater than ourselves is up to each individual. Others can help us. We may even adopt the ideas of someone else for a while or just believe that they believe.

Eventually, however, we need to come to believe for ours elves. The need for our own sense of spirituality is too vital to our recovery for us to neglect this highly personal process.

For us, part of the process of coming to believe is accepting the evidence we see. Our addiction caused us to deny the truths we saw. But now, in recovery we can believe what we see. At first, we open our minds and try something new; somehow believing that what we try might work. After we take a few small steps toward belief and trust and see results, we become willing to take bigger steps. We find that we are no longer acting as if we believe. Our belief is now reinforced with our own personal experience, some of which is unexplainable. We sometimes encounter remarkable coincidences in our lives that have no rational explanation. We don’t need to explain or analyze these occurrences. We can simply accept that they happen and be grateful for them. The longer we stay clean, the more evident it becomes that our addiction goes much deeper than the drugs we used. Much of our problem seems to center in our search for something to make us feel whole. It is a tremendous struggle to stop relying on our own reasoning and ask for help, especially given the self-centered nature of our disease. However, we are becoming

open-minded. In realizing that we don’t have all the answers, we begin to find some humility. We may not grasp the full impact of what being humble means, but our open-mindedness assures us that we have found and have begun to demonstrate this valuable quality.

Our humility and open-mindedness make us teachable. We allow others to share what has worked for them. This takes humility, for we must let go of our fears about how we may appear to others. Some of the strongest suggestions we may receive from other addicts are to attend meetings, ask for help, pray, and work the steps. Our experience has shown us that belief in a Higher Power leads us toward recovery in Narcotics Anonymous. People tend to live what they believe, and our newfound belief calls on us to live the program. No matter what we choose for our personal Higher Power, we’ve come to believe that NA works. We live what we believe by continuing on our path of recovery and working the Twelve Steps to the best of our ability. Even after years clean, when we have been working a program of recovery and seeking change, we may at times experience periods when life seems meaningless. We may experience a sense of alienation too painful to ignore. At such times, we may find ourselves moving away from sanity, not toward it. We may begin to question our commitment to recovery. We can become obsessed with self- destructive thoughts. We may feel an urge to fall back on what seems easier: the familiar ways of our addiction. During these times, we need to renew our commitment to recovery. We trust that we are undergoing a fundamental transformation, even though we may not yet understand its full implication for our lives. As painful as it seems, we must change. If we

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trust that there is growth despite the pain, we can walk through these difficult periods more readily.

During these times, relying on the Second Step provides us with hope and reminds us that we are not alone. If things don’t feel right, we take time to think and seek suggestions from our sponsor. We trust that, with help from other recovering addicts and a Power greater than ourselves, we can be restored to sanity in all areas of our lives. We draw upon what we have learned from going to meetings and following directions. We accept that life on life’s terms may not always be to our liking or, more importantly, to our understanding. Sanity often means that we don’t act on our first impulse. We begin to make choices that help us rather than harm us. What worked for us in the beginning remains applicable, no matter how many years we have been clean. Once again, we reapply ourselves to the basics of this program: going to meetings, reaching out for help, and working the steps. Although we may feel despair, there is hope; a Power greater than ourselves is always available to us.

Along with the hope we derive from working Step Two, we find that our way of thinking is undergoing a radical change. The whole world looks different. Where before we had no reason to hope, we now have every reason to expect a dramatic difference in our lives. By being open-minded, we’ve opened ourselves to new ideas. We’ve stepped away from the problem and toward a spiritual solution.

This solution is evidenced by our open-mindedness and our willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves. We must now go on to Step Three to develop a relationship with the God of our understanding.

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STEP THREE

‘We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

The surrender we experience in Step One, coupled with the hope and belief we find in Step Two, make us ready and willing to continue on the path toward freedom in Narcotics Anonymous. In Step Three, we put our belief in a Higher Power into action, making a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the God of our understanding.

Essential to working the Third Step is our willingness to allow the God of our understanding to work in our lives. We develop this willingness over time. The willingness we experience in our early recovery is valuable even though we may be willing only to a certain degree. Although this may feel like unconditional willingness, many of us have discovered that our willingness grew as we learned to trust a Power greater than ourselves.

The decision we make in Step Three requires that we move away from our self-will. Self-will is composed of such characteristics as closed-mindedness, unwillingness, self-centeredness, and outright defiance. Our self-centered obsession and its accompanying insanity have made our lives unmanageable. Acting on our self-will has kept us trapped in a continuous cycle of fear and pain. We wore ourselves out in fruitless attempts to control everyone and everything. We

couldn’t just allow events to happen. We were always on the lookout for ways we could force things to go as we wanted.

When we first look at making the decision called for in this step, we are likely to have questions, uncertainty, and even fear about what we are being asked to do. We might wonder why we need to make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the God of our understanding. Or we may wonder what will happen to us if we place ourselves in God’s care. We may fear that we won’t be happy with what our lives will be like after working this step.

When we trust that there is growth in taking action despite our fear or uncertainty, we are able to work Step Three. Even though we do not know how our lives will change as we work this step, we can learn to trust that our Higher Power will care for us better than we could. The Third Step is our commitment to our own emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.

What began in the Second Step as belief in a Higher Power can become a fuller relationship with a God of our understanding in Step Three. The decision that we make by working this step, and the relationship that results, will revolutionize our existence.

This decision is easier to make than to live by. We can easily lapse into old behavior; it takes determination, time, and courage to change. Because we’re not perfect, we simply continue to reaffirm our decision on a regular basis and then do the very best we can to live by it. Complete and unconditional surrender of our will and our lives is an ideal we strive to fulfill. Although we don’t become perfect, we do make a profound change by working this step. We are making a serious effort to live differently than we have in the past. From now on, we are going to be practicing this decision, and the way we relate to the world around us can change radically as a result.

In working Step Three, we begin to learn how to stop struggling. We learn to let go and trust the God of our understanding. If we take time to think and seek direction before acting, we no longer

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have to run on our own self-centered will. Turning our will and our lives over to the care of our Higher Power provides a solution to the problems created by a life based in self-will, resentment, and control.

The spiritual principles we are practicing will guide us, not just in the Third Step but throughout our recovery. The first three steps provide us with the solid spiritual foundation we will need to work the rest of the steps. We keep our initial surrender alive by actively practicing the faith and willingness required to work the Third Step. In other words, we’ve admitted our powerlessness and inability to manage our own lives; we’ve come to believe; now we need to surrender to the care of the God of our understanding.

We may find the willingness to work the Third Step by remembering where we came from and believing that where we are going is certain to be quite different. Though we don’t know what this “difference” will entail, we know that it is sure to be better than what we’ve had in the past. We rely on our faith and believe that this decision is one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. Turning our will and our lives over to the care of the God of our understanding is a tremendous decision. We may very well wonder exactly how we are supposed to put this decision into practice. Because our individual beliefs about a Power greater than ourselves vary, there is no uniform way to put our decision into action. However, we have found some ways we all can use to find a personal understanding of the Third Step. One is to continue our efforts to develop a personal relationship with a God of our understanding. Another is to give up our efforts at controlling everything around us. We relax our grip on the burdens we’ve been carrying and turn them over to the care of a Higher Power. Yet another way we can practice our Third Step

decision is to continue with our recovery by working the remainder of the steps. Our sponsor will guide us in applying the spiritual principles of recovery, showing us how to shift our focus away from our own self-interest and toward a more spiritually centered life.

As we get ready to make this decision, we talk with our sponsor, go to step meetings, and take the opportunity to share about it with other NA members. We gather as much knowledge, insight, and experience as we can from these sources, and then we make our own decision. No one can do it for us; we must consciously decide to do this for ourselves. Of course, this is not a decision we make solely with our intellect. In truth, this is a choice we make with our hearts, a decision based much more in feeling and desire than in deliberate reasoning. Though the path from mind to heart seems a difficult one, formally working this step with our sponsor seems to help us make this decision a part of who we are.

The search for a God of our own understanding is one of the most important efforts we will undertake in our recovery. We have complete personal choice and freedom in how we

understand our Higher Power. We can each find a Higher Power that does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Because we are powerless over our addict ion, we need a Power greater than ourselves to help us.

Just as our freedom to have a God of our own understanding is unlimited, so is our freedom to communicate with our Higher Power in whatever ways work for us. Anytime we communicate with our Higher Power, whether it’s simply with our thoughts or aloud at the close of a meeting, we are praying. Most of us ask our Higher Power for direction on a daily basis.

Our relationship with our Higher Power grows stronger as we practice faith. In our experience, talking to a Power greater than ourselves works. When we are having trouble in a particular area of our lives or when we feel unable to stay clean, our Higher Power can help; we only need to

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ask. With our prayers, we ask a Power greater than ourselves to care for us. Each time we take this action, we strengthen our faith and our decision to rely on our Higher Power.

Step Three doesn’t free us from having to take action, but it does liberate us from excessive worry about the results. If we want something a job, an education, recovery we have to make the effort to get it. Our Higher Power will take care of our spiritual needs, but we need to participate in our own lives; we can’t simply sit back and expect God to do everything. We are responsible for our recovery.

Our lives are meant to be lived. No matter how sincere our efforts at “turning it over,” we will make mistakes, wander off course, and experience moments of doubt. However, with each setback we are given a new opportunity to renew our commitment to live by spiritual principles. Part of the process of surrendering to God’s will is to surrender to spiritual principles such as honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, trust, and faith. We try to align our actions with what we believe our Higher Power would want for us, and then we deal with life as it happens.

We may hesitate to work Step Three in all areas of our lives, especially in matters we want to control. Our experience has been that we tend to hold on to certain areas. Perhaps we think, “I can control my finances just fine” or “My relationship is working; why do I need to turn that over to the care of my Higher Power?” Working Step Three only in certain areas of our lives short-circuits our spiritual development. We have found that our recovery benefits when we practice the principle of surrender, to the best of our ability, in all areas of our lives. We strive to work this step thoroughly.

We begin to see positive results from the decision we have made. We begin to notice changes. While the circumstances of our lives may not change, the way we deal with those circumstances does. Because we have made the decision to allow spiritual principles to work in our lives, we may notice a sense of relief. We are being relieved of a burden we’ve carried far too long: the need to control everything and everyone. We begin to react differently to the situations and people around us. As we gain acceptance, we cease to struggle against life on life’s terms. Striving to maintain and build on our surrender, we are better able to live and enjoy life in the moment.

For some of us, deciding to turn our will and lives over to the care of the God of our understanding is a process, not an event. However, in making that decision, we do make a

commitment to practice this step in our lives. When we are tempted to manipulate a situation, we recall this decision and let go. When we catch ourselves attempting to exert control over

someone or something, we stop and instead ask a loving God to help us work this step. Relinquishing control is not easy, but we can do it with help. With guidance from our sponsor and daily practice, we are sure to find ourselves learning how to get our egos out of the way so our Higher Power can work in our lives. Each time we are fearful over a situation, we can turn to this step and find the means to walk through our fear without resorting to our old ways.

Recovery doesn’t exempt us from having to live through painful situations. At some point in our lives, we may have to mourn the death of a loved one or deal with the end of a relationship. When such things happen to us, we hurt, and no amount of spiritual awareness will take our pain away. We do find, however, that the caring presence of a loving Power greater than ourselves will help us get through our pain clean. We may find that we are able to feel our Higher Power’s presence in the group, in our friends, or in talking to our sponsor. By tapping into that Power, we begin to trust and rely on it. We can cease questioning why painful things happen and trust that

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walking through the difficult times in our lives can strengthen our recovery. We can grow in spite of our pain or, perhaps, in response to it.

Recovery is a process of discovery. We learn about ourselves, and we learn how to cope with the world around us. When we are sincere in our desire to allow our Higher Power to care for us, we begin to gain a sense of serenity. We notice a gradual change in our thinking. Our attitudes and ideas become more positive. Our world is no longer as distorted by self-pity, denial, and resentment. We are beginning to replace those old attitudes with honesty, faith, and

responsibility; as a result, we begin to see our world in a better light. Our lives are guided by our emerging integrity. Even though we make mistakes, we become more willing to take

responsibility for our actions. We learn that we don’t have to be perfect to live a spiritual life. When we work Step Three with an open mind and heart, we find the results are far beyond our expectations.

As we experience this new way of life, we begin to realize that recovery is a priceless gift. We learn to trust; as we do, we open the doors to intimacy and develop new relationships. Where once we focused only on not using, we now can appreciate the many things that make our lives so valuable. We savor the laughter and the joy we hear expressed so abundantly in our meetings. As recovery becomes more central in our lives and we internalize the principles embodied in the steps, our view of the world changes profoundly. As our awareness grows, so does our

appreciation and faith in our Higher Power.

If we pause to reflect on our lives at this stage of our recovery, we will see that we have

experienced dramatic personal growth. The relief we experience as a result of working the first three steps is only a glimpse of the growth we can experience through working the Twelve Steps. The role of the Third Step expands in our lives as we continue working the other steps. Step Eleven asks us to pray for the knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out. Step Three begins this process; it is here that we start to seek God’s will for us. Moving from a self-seeking life to a life based on spiritual principles requires us to change profoundly.

With the help of a loving God, we are ready to move forward on our journey. This is a twelve-step program, not a three-twelve-step program. The decision we’ve made in the Third Step is perhaps the most momentous decision we’ll ever make in our lives, but we need to work the rest of the steps for it to remain meaningful. There is more work to do. We have found that the spiritual path set forth in the Twelve Steps is the only way to recovery in Narcotics Anonymous. Putting our recovery commitment into action, we work Step Four.

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STEP FOUR

“We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

By working the first three steps, we have formed a solid foundation for our recovery. Our active addiction cannot remain arrested, however, unless we build upon this foundation. As we worked the Third Step, many of us were puzzled: How can we make sure we are really turning our will and lives over to the care of God? The answer is simple: We work the remainder of the steps, starting with Step Four.

Why work the Fourth Step? After all, we’ve been able to stay clean so far. But some of us are still haunted by a driving obsession to use drugs. Others find that the feelings of discomfort are more subtle: a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right, a sense of impending doom, or feelings of fear and anger that have no apparent reason. Still others may think we’re doing just fine without a Fourth Step. However, our experience as a fellowship has shown that, sooner or later, members who don’t work this crucial step relapse.

For many of us, our motivation to work the Fourth Step is quite simple: We’re working a

program of recovery and we want to continue. Because our disease involves much more than our drug use, recovery involves more than simple abstinence from drugs. The solution to our

problem is a profound change in our thinking and our behavior. We need to change how we perceive the world and alter our role in it. We need to change our attitude. Whether our motivation is a desire to move away from our addiction or to move toward recovery doesn’t really matter.

The Fourth Step is a turning point in our journey of recovery. It is a time for deep personal reflection. The confusion that we attempted to mask with self-deception and drugs is about to diminish. We are embarking on a search for insight into ourselves, our feelings, our fears, our resentments, and the patterns of behavior that make up our lives.

We may be very frightened at the prospect of examining ourselves so thoroughly. We don’t know ourselves very well, and we may not be sure we want to. Our fear of the unknown may seem overwhelming at this point, but if we recall our faith and trust in our Higher Power, our fear can be overcome. We believe that part of God’s will for us is to work the steps. We trust that the final outcome of working the Fourth Step will be the continued healing of our spirits, and we go on.

The principles of recovery that we have already begun to practice are vital to working the Fourth Step. The honest acceptance of our addiction, brought with us from Step One, will help us to be honest about other aspects of our addiction. We’ve developed a level of trust and faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and that glimmer of hope we’ve been feeling is growing with each day clean. We’ve paved the way to recovery with our willingness, and we find the courage necessary to work the Fourth Step through living these principles.

Honesty is an essential part of this step. Our years of living a lie must end. If we sit down and become very quiet with ourselves, we will find it easier to get in touch with the truth. What we currently know to be true, we put on paper, holding nothing back. Telling the truth is a brave act, but with our faith and trust in the God of our understanding, we find the courage we need to be

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searching and fearless. With our courage, we are able to put on paper those things we thought we’d never tell.

What is meant by a “searching and fearless moral inventory?” We take stock of our assets and liabilities. We try to get at the bottom of who we are, to expose the lies we have told ourselves about ourselves. For years, we became whoever we needed to be to survive our addiction. After living a lifetime of lies, we began to believe those lies. Although we did discover some valuable truths in the First Step, the Fourth Step further separates fantasy from reality. We can begin to stop being the person we have invented and find the freedom to be who we are.

If the word “moral” bothers us, we have found that talking with our sponsor about our reservations can ease our discomfort. A moral inventory doesn’t mean that we will condemn ourselves. In reality, the inventory process is one of the most loving things we can do for ourselves. We simply look at our instincts, our desires, our motives, our tendencies, and the compulsive routines that kept us trapped in our addiction. No matter how many days or how many years we have been clean, we are still human and subject to defects and failings. An inventory allows us to look at our basic nature with its flaws and its strengths. We look not only at our imperfections, but also at our hopes, our dreams, our aspirations, and where they may have gone astray. Step Four is a big step forward on the path of recovery.

Some of us may want to write our inventory all at once; others spend some time writing each day. Any time we sit down to write, we ask our Higher Power for the courage and honesty we need to be thorough and to reveal what we are searching for. In most cases, we are relieved to find that once we begin, the words seem to flow naturally. We need not worry about what we are writing. Our Higher Power will reveal no more to us than we can handle.

Most of us don’t have much experience with the type of self-appraisal we are about to do, and we must have the guidance and support of our sponsor in order to understand what we’re doing. Our sponsor may give us a format to follow, certain subjects or points to concentrate on, or just general guidance. Not only can our sponsor provide direction for the actual inventory, he or she can encourage us to be courageous, remind us to pray, and be emotionally supportive throughout this process. We often strengthen our relationship with our sponsor by relying on her or his experience at this time.

Consistent action on our Fourth Step is important. We can’t afford to delay work on our inventory. Once we begin writing, we need to continue our inventory until we are done. If we have a tendency to procrastinate, it is a good idea to set aside a certain amount of time each day to work on our inventory. Such a routine establishes our inventory as a high priority in our lives. If we put our Fourth Step away once we have begun, we run the risk of never returning to it. We are painstaking and detail-oriented in our inventory. We systematically examine all aspects of our lives. We begin to see and understand the truth about ourselves, our motives, and our patterns. It is important that we look at more than one dimension of our experience. What

motivated us to act the way we did? What repercussions did our behavior have in our lives? How did our behavior affect those around us? How did we harm others? How did we feel about our actions and others’ reactions? While these are only a few of the points we address in our inventories, we have found them and other issues like them to be essential areas to examine. In the Fourth Step, it is important to take a good hard look at how fear has worked in our lives. Our experience tells us that self- centered fear is at the root of our disease. Many of us have pretended to be fearless when, in fact, we were terrified. Fear has driven us to act rashly in trying to protect ourselves. We have often been paralyzed into inaction because of our fears. We may

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have resorted to scheming and manipulating because we feared the future. We went to extremes to protect ourselves from what we saw as potential loss, disaster, and a constant lack of what we needed. In the past, we had no faith that a Higher Power would care for us; therefore, we

attempted to take control of our lives and everything around us. We used people, we

manipulated, we lied, we plotted, we planned, we stole, we cheated, and then we lied some more to cover up our schemes. We experienced envy, jealousy, and deep, gut-wrenching insecurities. We were alone. As we drove away the people who cared about us, we used more drugs, trying to cover up our feelings. The lonelier we felt, the more we tried to control everything and

everybody. We suffered when things didn’t go our way, but so strong was our desire for power and control that we couldn’t see the futility of our efforts to manage events. In our new lives, we have faith in a loving God whose will for us is better than anything we could manipulate or control for ourselves. We need not fear what might happen.

In our inventories, we assess the emotional effects of our addict ion. Some of us became so skilled at shutting down our feelings with drugs or other distractions that, by the time we came to our first meeting, we had lost touch with our own emotions. In recovery, we learn to identify what we are feeling. Naming our feelings is important, for once we do so, we can begin to deal with them. Rather than panicking over how we feel, we can specifically say how we’re feeling. This gets us away from our limited way of identifying feelings as either “good” or “bad” with not much in between.

We make a list of our resentments, for they often play a large part in making our recovery uncomfortable. We cannot allow ourselves to be obsessed with hostility toward others. We look at the institutions that may have affected us: our families, schools, employers, organized religion, the law, or jails. We list the people, places, social values, institutions, and situations against which we bear anger. We examine not only the circumstances surrounding these resentments, but we look at the part we played in them. What in us was so threatened that we experienced such deep emotional torment? Often, we will see that the same areas of our lives were affected again and again.

We look at our relationships as well, especially the manner in which we related to our families. We don’t do this to place blame for our addiction on our families. We keep in mind that we are writing an inventory of ourselves, not of others. We write about how we felt about our families and the way we acted on our feelings. In most cases, we’ll find that the patterns of behavior we established early in life are what we’ve carried with us up to the present. Some of our patterns and choices have served us well, while others have not. Through the inventory we search for the patterns we want to continue and those we want to change.

Writing about all of our relationships is very important, and we’ll want to pay particular attention to our friendships. If we gloss over examining our platonic friendships in favor of focusing on romantic relationships, our inventories will be incomplete. Many of us come to NA never having had a long-term friendship because of conflicts within ourselves. Those conflicts were the real grounds for the arguments we started with our friends and our ensuing refusal to work through the disagreement and continue the friendship. Some of us felt that we would end up getting hurt in any close friendship, so before that happened, we arranged the end of the friendship ourselves. We may have feared intimacy to such a degree that we never revealed anything about ourselves to our friends. We may have induced guilt in our friends to ensure their loyalty or indulged in other forms of emotional blackmail. If our friends had others in their lives, we may have felt so jealous and insecure that we tried to remove the threat of their other friends. Our behavior ranged

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from taking our friends hostage to taking them for granted. We may find several instances where we sacrificed our friendships for romantic relationships.

We will probably find identical conflicts and behaviors in our romantic relationships. We’ll see the same difficulties with trust, refusal to be vulnerable, and perhaps a lifelong pattern of inability to make commitments. As we write, we’ll most likely see fear of intimacy in each relationship or discover that we’ve never understood the difference between intimacy and sex. Whether we ran from close relationships because of fear or because we had been hurt over and over again, we search out the common threads that appear in all of our relationships.

We may find that our sexual beliefs and behavior have caused problems in our relationships. We may have settled for sex when we really wanted love. We may have used sex to get something we wanted or believed that, by having sex, we could extract a commitment from an unwilling partner. We ask ourselves if our sexual behavior has been based in selfishness or in love. We may have used sex to fill the spiritual void we felt inside. Some of us felt shame as a result of our sexual practices. After years of compulsively acting on our fears and misguided beliefs about sex, we want to be at peace with our own sexuality. This is a very uncomfortable topic for most of us. However, if we want something different than what we’ve had, it’s necessary that we begin the process of change by writing about it.

Some of us were abused. We may have been victims of incest or rape. We may have had terrible childhoods of deprivation and neglect. Experiences like these may have led us to inflict the same abuse on others. We may have prostituted ourselves or allowed other forms of degradation because we didn’t feel that we deserved anything better. Though painful and sad, the past cannot be changed. However, the warped beliefs we have developed about ourselves and others can be changed with the help of our Higher Power. We write about events like these so that we can be free of our most painful secrets and get on with our lives. We don’t have to be the lifelong victims of our past.

To experience serenity, we must begin to alter the self-defeating patterns that have prevailed in our lives. The Fourth Step helps us identify those patterns. We begin to see how we have maneuvered through life, perhaps not consciously planning our own misery but making choices which resulted in our lives becoming unmanageable. Most of us have blamed various people for the prices we paid for our addiction. We didn’t want to accept that our addiction had a negative impact that we alone were responsible for. Some of us committed crimes and then complained about the consequences. Some of us were irresponsible at work and then objected loudly when we were held accountable. We beat a hasty retreat whenever life caught up with us. Our inventories will help us identify our responsibility for our actions and find those circumstances where we tend to place blame elsewhere. Our booklet, Working Step Four in Narcotics

Anonymous, can provide more avenues to explore.

The quality of our lives depends, to a large degree, on the results of our decisions. As we write our inventory we look for the times when we made decisions that hurt us; we also look for those times when we made decisions that worked out well. If we lived our lives by default, refusing to make any choices, we write about that, too. Those times when we procrastinated until

opportunities were missed and gone, the times when we abandoned all responsibility, the times when we withdrew and refused to participate in life all are inventory material. Most of us had hopes and dreams for ourselves at some point in our lives, but we abandoned those in the pursuit of our addiction. In our inventory we try to recall our lost dreams and find out how our choices had ruined our chances of having those dreams come true. We ask ourselves when we stopped

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believing in ourselves and when we stopped believing in anything outside ours elves. Through this process, our lost dreams may reawaken.

We dig deep to learn how we lived in conflict with our own morals and values. If we believed it was wrong to steal and we were stealing everything we could get our hands on anyway, what did we do to quiet our anguish? If we believed in monogamy but were unfaithful to our partners, what did we do so that we could live with our compromised principles? Certainly we used more drugs, but what else? We explore how we felt about ignoring our deepest beliefs. In the process, we discover our lost values so that we can begin to rebuild them.

In our inventories, we will need to be aware of our assets. With most of us being unaccustomed to looking for our character strengths, we might have some trouble with this task. But if we examine our behavior with an open mind, we’re sure to find situations where we persevered in the face of adversity, showed concern for others, or even where our spirit triumphed over our addiction. We begin to uncover the pure and loving spirit that lies at the core of our being as we look for our character assets. We begin to define our values. We learn what we can do and, more importantly, what we can’t do if we want to lead productive and fulfilling lives. What we did in our active addiction will not work for us in recovery Step Four allows us to chart a new course for our lives.

The Fourth Step provides us with the initial insight we need to grow. Whether we are writing our first inventory or our twentieth, we are starting a process that takes us from confusion to clarity, from resentment to forgiveness, from spiritual confinement to spiritual freedom. We can turn to this process again and again. When we are confused, when we are angry when we have problems that don’t seem to disappear, an inventory is a good way to take stock of just where we stand on the path to recovery. After we have written a number of inventories, we may discover that our first Fourth Step merely scratched the surface. As different attitudes and behaviors become apparent to us in later recovery we’ll want to renew the process of change by working the Fourth Step again.

The steps are tools we use over and over on our spiritual path. In the process of our recovery God will reveal more to us as we have the maturity and the spiritual strength to understand it. Over time, the nature of the work we have to do is disclosed to us. As we continue in recovery we begin to resolve some of the basic conflicts contributing to our addiction. As the pain of old wounds begins to fade, we begin to live more fully in the present.

The Fourth Step allows us to identify the patterns, behaviors, and beliefs that show us the exact nature of our wrongs. We have written an inventory of ourselves which has revealed what we can change with God’s help. To continue the process of change, we move on, making our admissions in Step Five.

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STEP FIVE

“We admitted to God, to ourselves, ad to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

Now that we have completed our written inventory, it is essential that we share it promptly. The sooner we work our Fifth Step, the stronger the foundation of our recovery will be. We’ve built this foundation on spiritual principles such as surrender, honesty, trust, faith, willingness, and courage; with each step forward in our recovery we strengthen our commitment to these principles. We reaffirm our commitment to recovery by immediately working Step Five.

Despite our desire to recover, we may find that we’re feeling frightened at this point. This fear is only natural. After all, we’re about to confront the exact nature of our wrongs, candidly

admitting our secrets to God, to ourselves, and to another human being. If we allow our feelings of shame or our fears of change and rejection to stop our progress, our problems will only be compounded. If we stop moving forward in our recovery, if we cease making every possible effort to recover, we will have given in to the disease of addiction.

We must overcome our fear and work the Fifth Step if we are to make any significant changes in the way we live. We gather our courage and go on. We may call our sponsor for reassurance. Usually, a reminder that we don’t have to face our feelings alone makes all the difference in easing our fears. Working this step with the support of our sponsor and a loving God is a way of putting into practice our decision to allow God to care for our will and our lives. That decision, like most decisions we make, must be followed with action. Following our Third Step decision with the action of the Fourth and Fifth Steps will lead to a closer relationship with our Higher Power.

Our understanding of the spiritual principles we have practiced in the first four steps will be enhanced by working the Fifth Step. We experience honesty by making an admission, just as we did in Step One, but we experience it on a deeper level. The admission we are about to make to ourselves in Step Five is especially important. Not only do we open up and tell the truth about ourselves, we also hear this admission from our own lips, breaking the pattern of denial that has plagued us for so long. We find new levels of honesty, especially self-honesty, when we squarely face the results of our addiction and see the reality of our lives. The risks we take in this step increase our trust in God and nourish the faith and hope we first experienced in Step Two. We take our willingness a step further, thereby renewing the decision we made in Step Three. We draw on the courage we acquired in Step Four and find that we are far more brave than we ever dreamed possible. This bravery is demonstrated not by our lack of fear but by the action we take in spite of our fear. We set a time to share our inventory then we show up and share at the scheduled time.

Another action which requires courage is our admission to ours elves. We need to focus particular attention on this aspect of the Fifth Step. If we don’t, we may find the benefits we derive from this step are not as meaningful as they could have been. As our Basic Text states, “Step Five is not simply a reading of Step Four.” We want to make sure we are acknowledging and accepting the exact nature of our wrongs. We can even formalize this admission to ourselves if we think it will help. However, the manner in which we make this admission to ourselves is not as important as the action itself.

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We gain a new understanding of the principle of humility as we work this step. We’ve most likely been under the impression that we were somehow bigger or more visible than other people. Through working the Fifth Step, we find that few of our actions deserve exaggerated attention. Through our self-disclosure, we feel connected with humanity, perhaps for the first time in our lives. As we share our most personal feelings and our most carefully guarded secrets, we may experience anguish. However, many of us have looked up and seen unconditional love in the eyes of the person hearing our Fifth Step. The feelings of acceptance and belonging we experienced at that moment helped us to feel a part of the program.

The knowledge that we are about to face feelings we have long avoided may cause a rise in our anxiety level, but we go on, encouraged by our sponsor to trust the God of our understanding. The first thing we must realize is that the Fifth Step is not a quick fix for a painful situation. If we work this step expecting our feelings to go away, we are expecting the steps to numb us the way drugs did. We review our first four steps and see that their purpose is to awaken our spirits, not deaden our feelings. We will need support and understanding to cope with our feelings. If we choose an understanding individual to make our admissions to, we will have all the support we need.

Although there is no requirement that the listener must be our sponsor, most of us choose to share our inventory with him or her. By doing so, we are most likely to benefit from the full range of experience another recovering addict has to share. After all, who can better understand what we are attempting than those who have done it for themselves? Addicts more experienced in recovery than we are will already have dealt with the matters we are just beginning to face. Such people can share with us their experience and the solutions they have found through working this step. The bond we share with our sponsor will strengthen our connection with the program and increase our sense of belonging.

The person who listens to our Fifth Step should be someone who understands the process of recovery we are involved in and someone who is willing to help us through it. We have found that an ideal listener will have enough compassion to honor our feelings, enough integrity to respect our confidences, and enough insight to help us keep the exact nature of our wrongs within our field of vision. Knowing that we are sharing our inventory, she or he will help us to avoid getting sidetracked by blaming others for the things we’ve written about in our Fourth Step.

Although we know we are going to derive meaningful benefits from working this step, we may still need to take a moment to reaffirm our surrender and the decision we made in the Third Step. We can ask a Power greater than ourselves for the honesty, courage, and willingness to work this step. To invite God into this process, we may want to say a prayer. The prayer can be anything that reaffirms our commitment to recovery. Praying with the person hearing our Fifth Step can be a profoundly intimate experience.

Not only do we pray to ask for strength and courage, many of us also ask our Higher Power to listen as we make our admission. Why is it so important that we also make our admission to God? Because this is a spiritual program, and our whole purpose is to awaken spiritually. Our willingness to approach our Higher Power openly with our past and who we are is central to our recovery. In the past, some of us felt that we weren’t worthy of a relationship with God. Our secrets blocked our ability to feel any acceptance or love from that Power. When we reveal something about ourselves, we draw closer to our Higher Power and experience the

unconditional love and acceptance which springs from that Power. The feeling that the God of our understanding accepts us, no matter what we’ve done, enhances our acceptance of ourselves.